Literature Review on Genocide Pedagogies and Curricula: 1980-Present
Prepared by Liz Airton for the Life Stories in Education Working Group
July – December, 2009
Contents
INTRODUCTION 2
Process Taken 3
Notes for the User 3
On the Colour Coding Scheme 4
SCHOLARLY SOURCES 5
Journal Articles 5
Journal Special Issues 65
Books 66
Book Chapters 83
Conference Papers 86
Research Reports 90
Encyclopaedia Entries 92
Theses 94
Other 103
CURRICULAR RESOURCES 105
Online Resources 105
Curriculum Guides in Print 117
INTRODUCTION
Although there are hundreds of sources on education and genocide, there is no one ‘body of literature’ on genocide pedagogies and curricula insofar as a ‘body’ of literature comes from a broad network of scholars who cite and build on each other’s work. There is copious literature on how to adapt particular pedagogical techniques (e.g. simulations, reader-response, etc.) to teaching about one genocide or another genocide, but usually from the vantage of political science, sociology or high school social studies (i.e., one particular curriculum) and not studies in genocide pedagogies/curricula (with a notable exception being the work of Samuel Totten – see below). As expected, this review is overwhelmingly (+/- 70%) constituted by literature on Holocaust pedagogies/curricula; the degree to which pedagogical/curricular suggestions can be extracted from this corpus for teaching on other genocides varies greatly depending on the degree of historical specificity characteristic of a particular source. Most of the scholarly work in print (i.e., books, journal articles, etc.) that applies to genocide is directly focussed on the Holocaust whereas curriculum guides (print and online) as well as online sources are more diverse with respect to their foci. Therefore, the Scholarly Sources section is far less diverse than is the Curricular Resources section.
As above, there cannot be said to be trends in a ‘body of literature’ on genocide pedagogies in cases other than the Holocaust, where there are clear patterns. To this end, much debate has occurred around the question of whether one should use a moral (Stern Strom, FHAO, Tritt) or historical (Illingworth, Salmons, Kinloch) approach. Many authors point to the importance of maintaining the uniqueness of the Holocaust, while many more do not given that many other genocides have before and since occurred. Indisputably, contextualizing the Holocaust firmly within the history of European anti-Semitism seems to be the norm; however, at least one author (Stotsky) insists that Holocaust education should take account of living Jewish history as well. In terms of direct pedagogical approaches, the us of fictional literature and non/fictional first-person narratives abounds as a strategy (e.g., Danks, Drew, Ducey, Totten 1998b, etc.) – including the use of graphic novels (Adams, Christensen) – as does the use of online resources (e.g., Brown, Davis et al., Wrenn, Street & Stang, etc.). A particularly thorny controversy has erupted regarding whether or not simulations (role plays) are an appropriate means through which to teach the Holocaust (Scheweber vs. Totten). In addition, many scholars offer insights on how to encounter Holocaust denial in the classroom (e.g., Friedrichs, Lindquist 2009, Petropoulos, Short 1994b, Millen et al. 1996, etc.). These discussions are often not framed as scholarly debates or interactions, but as the observations of individual educators or researchers.
Once again, on teaching genocides other than the Holocaust there is not a sufficiently developed field such that one could point to trends and debates. Any curriculum on the Armenian genocide or the Holodomor[1] (most widely represented) seems to have been developed not by educational authorities (as with the Holocaust, although these have been found to contain problems: see Totten & Riley, 2005; Riley & Totten, 2002) but by nationalist groups; many such curricula have not been favourably reviewed (see Totten, 1991). As above, scholarly work forms very little of the available body of resources on teaching about genocides other than the Holocaust, but online sources to this end are fairly abundant. Aside from seemingly one-off publications wherein a scholar thinks about a genocide as a case study for showcasing a pedagogical method (e.g., Brown 2007, Christensen 2007, etc.), the only consistent scholarly work on genocide pedagogies and curricula apart from the Holocaust are associated with Samuel Totten. His work is an excellent place to begin exploring, particularly the following:
Social Education 55(2) – Special Issue on Teaching Genocide. (1991). Guest edited by Totten.
Totten, S. (Ed.). (2004). Chapter 7. In Teaching About Genocide: Issues, Approaches, and Resources. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.
Totten, S. (1993). Educating about genocide: Curricular and inservice training. In I. Charny (Ed.), Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review (pp. 194-225). New York: Facts on File.
Process Taken
Overall, the review involved the following. I began with a complete and multi-term ERIC Search with reference tracing, and this yielded approximately thirty pages of references and abstracts on genocide pedagogies and curricula. The remainder of the sources herein were located as follows: individual journal keyword searches in SCOPUS, JSTOR, Web of Science, Social Sciences FullText, Ovid Current Contents; searches on Google Scholar, Amazon and WorldCat; and a detailed survey of several dozen books; all with complete reference tracing.
Notes for the User
This review largely excludes texts on teaching after the fact in countries or regions that have experienced genocide (including Israel), as well as the effects of genocide on the delivery of education in these countries. Also, the emphasis here is on secular public education. This means that pedagogies and curricula expressly created for Jewish schools were not spotlighted nor were the challenges particular to doing Holocaust education in Christian/traditional schools. The focus here is on genocide pedagogies and curricula in conventional educational contexts.
Where abstracts were not provided, I have endeavoured to obtain hard copies of all sources in order to write original descriptions; however, this was not possible in every instance. Where my initials (“LA”) appear following an abstract or description it was written by me; where “” appear, the abstract came from the cited source (either ERIC, an annotated bibliography, scholarly review, online source such as Amazon or World Cat, or the publisher website); and where no initials nor “” appear the abstract was provided by the author or journal service in keeping with common scholarly practice (mostly in the case of articles). Any entries without abstracts/descriptions were inaccessible.
Please bear in mind the following when using the review:
· the BOOK CHAPTERS section covers relevant chapters in otherwise irrelevant books;
· and the BOOK section documents entire books about genocide pedagogies and/or curricula and only under the editor(s)’ name(s) (i.e., relevant chapters are not also indexed by individual authors in the BOOK CHAPTERS section).
On the Colour Coding Scheme
Cambodia Armenian The Holocaust Sudan Rwanda
Former Yugoslavia Indigenous Peoples Holodomor
Entries in the review are categorized by publication type (e.g., articles, books, book chapters, theses, curricular materials, etc.). However, many entries are also colour-coded in order to identify, where applicable, a focus on teaching a particular genocide. Some entries have several colour codes indicated in the description or abstract, whereas those exclusively focused on teaching one genocide have only the author’s name colour coded. If an entry has no colour codes anywhere it is – most often – broadly applicable to teaching on genocide. In some cases where genocide is referenced as a phenomenon in an otherwise lengthy annotation, this information is underlined.
Please note that this categorization is not intended to serve as any kind of definitive list of which atrocities were, in fact, genocides. Certain atrocities that are widely considered to be genocides (such as in East Timor or the mass killing of Bengalis during the partition of India and Pakistan) are not colour-coded here simply because there is an insufficient number – likely zero – of resources identified as pertaining to their direct instruction. The above colour-coded genocides were selected by virtue of their prevalence in the reviewed literature. Genocides other than those colour coded above that appear at least once in the review are: East Timor, Bangladesh, Iraqi Kurdistan (1988), Indonesia (1965-66), and the Hutu in Burundi. These can instead be located using any document search function.
Finally, there are certainly problematic aspects to including all genocides of indigenous peoples under the same colour code; however, given the relatively widespread references to teaching on the many genocidal acts perpetrated against disparate indigenous peoples throughout the world, I have chosen to opt for this grouping in the review in order to facilitate its use by educators interested in post/anti-colonial pedagogies and curricula.
SCHOLARLY SOURCES
Journal Articles
Abowitz, D. A. (2002). Bringing the sociological into the discussion: Teaching the sociology of genocide and the Holocaust. Teaching Sociology, 30(1), 26-38.
Discusses the necessity and challenge of integrating sociology and sociological insight into teaching and research on genocide and the Holocaust in the 21st century. It is posited that the absence of a strong and recognized core of sociology (and sociologists) in Holocaust and genocide studies (more broadly), limits how much people have learned and can learn about these phenomena, past, present, and future. What sociology can contribute, it is argued, is the theoretical foundation for analyzing these events and situating them in sociohistorical context. Sociology has the theoretical tools necessary to begin to put the pieces together, and to integrate research, teaching, and learning in this area. A sociology of genocide and the Holocaust is needed, one grounded in the study of collective behavior and social movement theory, social groups and group dynamics, interaction of structure and agency, and the social construction of race in the 20th century. That is what has been missing; it can be achieved only by bringing the "sociological" back into the discussion and by bringing the sociology of genocide and the Holocaust into curricula.
Adalian, R. (1987). How and why to teach the Armenian Genocide: Seeking a humanist perspective. Armenian Review, 40(1), 69-77.
The author offers some suggestions for teaching the Armenian genocide in some detail, with much consideration for the politics of memory and humanism. His suggestions are: the genocide must be understood as a living issue and not simply a past occurrence; and that the larger political, philosophical, sociological and moral issues pertaining to genocide must be addressed and incorporated (he goes into these in turn as they apply to the Armenian genocide). Emphasizes the personal connections of Armenian people to the genocide today. (LA)
Adams, J. (1999). Of mice and manga: Comics and graphic novels in art education. International Journal of Art and Design Education, 18(1), 62-75.
A justification for the inclusion of graphic comic art in post-14 art education following the development of graphic novels in Europe, Japan and the USA. in recent years. The case is based on the visual dynamics of the medium and the potential for a critical realism which can be exploited in students' studio practice and research. Particular attention is given to the Holocaust novel Maus and selected Japanese 'Manga' comics which have made an impact in the west, such as Barefoot Gen and Adolf. The article analyses the various innovative visual forms that these graphic novels utilise and considers their effectiveness as a vehicle for practice and research in the institutional art curriculum.
Adams, J. (2008). The pedagogy of the image text: Nakazawa, Sebald and Spiegelman recount social traumas. Discourse, 29(1), 35-49.
The paper discusses the pedagogy of the image text, a term that encompasses the graphic novels of Nakazawa and Spiegelman and the heavily illustrated novels of Sebald. Increasingly, artist-authors have turned to the image-text medium to represent catastrophic social events, and these three authors' works are discussed as seminal documents of cataclysmic societal events, such as the bombing of Hiroshima or the Holocaust. All have provided a narrative visual framework that attempts to inform us of the lived experience of these traumatic moments, insofar as their medium will permit, and these methods are discussed and compared. The pedagogic impulse - the desire to inform a contemporary audience of such major historical events - is evident in all three selected authors' works. Their diverse yet comparable visual methods, and the ways in which they seem to imbue us with authentic vicarious experiences arguably constitute a visual pedagogy of social crises.
Albrecht, T. L., & Nelson, C. E. (2001). Teaching the Holocaust as an interdisciplinary course in psychology. Teaching of Psychology, 28(4), 289-291.
Teaching the Holocaust in psychology provides an important opportunity to explain to students how social prejudice, hate group activity, and even genocide are grounded in explanatory concepts of bias, social prejudice, and language. At the same time, research on prosocial behavior helps explain the motivations and actions of rescuers. The subject of the Holocaust creates a powerful cognitive and emotional impact on students, provides a powerful illustration for studying important aspects of human behavior, and readily illustrates several key concepts in social psychology.
Alexander, J. (2008). Teaching with Holocaust narratives. Use of English, 59(2), 127-138.
Explores how two recent children's novels, Morris Gleitzman's "Once" and John Boyne's "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas", provide an opportunity to review the use of Holocaust narratives within schools. Argues that though the arguments for and against the use of fictional accounts are powerful, it is possible that the classroom dialogue stimulated by reading these novels is itself of value as the English teacher's contribution to the educational task in relation to comprehending the Final Solution.
Allen, R. (2000). Springboards into Holocaust: Five activities for secondary social studies students. Southern Social Studies, 25(2), 17-29.
Explains that in a study of the Holocaust teachers must connect the stories of the Holocaust to the lives of their students. Provides five activities about the Holocaust that focus upon teaching tolerance. Addresses the children of the Holocaust, difference versus deviance, social identity, and The Night of Broken Glass.
Baker, R. W. (1989). Facing History and Ourselves: Curriculum produces political debate. Curriculum Review, 28(6), 4-10.
“A detailed and fascinating article about the purpose and methods as well as the controversy surrounding the Facing History and Ourselves program, a teacher training and curriculum organization that provides service for teachers and students for addressing issues of prejudice and intolerance in twentieth century history (with a special focus on the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust).”[2]